Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership―Customs & Trade/Value Chain Alignment 

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a free trade agreement between 15 member countries in the Asia Pacific Region. RCEP includes, amongst others, chapters on trade-in goods, services, investments, and other provisions designed to improve the business environment around matters like e-commerce, government procurement, intellectual property, and others.  

Deloitte can provide specialised assistance to companies that would like to understand the opportunities presented by RCEP for their business. Some opportunities our professionals can identify are: 

• Deploying Global Trade Radar, a proprietary Deloitte tool, to carry out data analytics of current supply chain and trade flows to map out companies’ existing regional footprint.

• Identify opportunities under RCEP and the steps required to realise them. 

• Review production processes, value-adding and other ancillary activities along the supply chain to determine whether goods satisfy the rules under RCEP or if changes are required.

• Obtaining binding rulings from customs authorities in the relevant member countries.

• Executing other customs and trade related review including opportunities to benefit from other trade facilitation measures available under RCEP.

• Assisting with other ancillary matters that may arise during RCEP planning, including deploying GTA Review Smart (a Deloitte proprietary web-based health check tool), Trade Compass (FTA and tariff planning finder), and Trade Classifier (an AI based HS classification solution). 

Opinion piece

Of RCEP, business, and a less messy bowl of noodles

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was signed on 15 November 2020, at the virtually held 37th Asean Summit and is the world's largest Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to date. Find out more about the benefits and trade-offs of the agreement through this opinion piece by our global trade advisory leader Wong Meng Yew,  Singapore tax manager Alexander Goh, and Singapore tax associate Gerald Mui.

Click here to read more.